Data mining, integration, and utilization are the inevitable trend of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) in the context of Big Data. With the increasing demand for data privacy, federated learning has emerged as a new paradigm, which enables distributed joint training of medical data sources without leaving the private domain. However, federated learning is suffering from security threats as the shared local model will reveal original datasets. Privacy leakage is even more fatal in healthcare because medical data contains critically sensitive information. In addition, open wireless channels are susceptible to malicious attacks. To further safeguard the privacy of IoMT, we propose a comprehensive privacy-preserving federated learning scheme with a tactful dropout handling mechanism. The proposed scheme leverages blind masking and certificateless proxy re-encryption (CL-PRE) for secure aggregation, ensuring the confidentiality of the local model and rendering the global model invisible to any parties other than clients. It also provides authentication of uploaded models while protecting identity privacy. Compared with other relevant schemes, our solution has better performance on functional features and efficiency, and is more applicable to IoMT systems with many devices.

The notion of an intelligent transportation system (ITS) aims to boost the performance of transportation networks, which has gained more and more traction in both academic and commercial circles. ITS is a constantly evolving vision that combines cutting-edge transportation approaches with new information, communication, computers, and other technology. ITS should discover consequence routes to enhance the sustainability, safety, and trustworthiness of the entire transportation system utilizing emerging technologies. In this paper, a sustainable safety management framework for connected vehicles is proposed by integrating blockchain. It introduces smart transportation equipment called an AI-enabled vehicle smart device (AVSD) for vehicular communications. AVSD can reduce energy consumption by decreasing the computational costs in vehicular communications. Smart contracts are used to identify vehicles automatically and establish secure communication among vehicles and emergency service stations (ESSs) like hospitals, police stations, and fire stations. The experiment results show that the proposed framework provides a communication environment for sustainable safety and security using the introduced smart transportation device. The proposed blockchain-enabled sustainable safety management framework has the potential to improve safety and sustainability in the transportation industry by creating a secure, decentralized, and transparent platform for managing safety data and promoting safe and sustainable driving behaviors.

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) have been growing in the evolution of interaction with the physical world. CPS can control and manages applications of the physical world around us. However, most traditional CPS-based systems have been designed and developed within the centralized system, which can violate security, trust, and privacy (STP). Blockchain is a potential solution to realizing CPS. It can provide data security and privacy through block hash generation and transaction validation schemes. Blockchain applications can enhance the performance of CPS through the peer-to-peer (P2P) communication mechanism. In this paper, we have described several challenges of CPS applications (i.e., smart grids and connected vehicles) and provided blockchain-based solutions to address STP challenges. The benefits of blockchain in CPS have been discussed in this paper. We also proposed a blockchain-enabled CPS and discussed the integration process of blockchain in several components of CPSs. The proposed solutions enhance the performance of CPS concerning security, privacy, and trust management.

A digital twin (DT) is a virtual replica of a physical system that allows simulation, optimization, and predictive maintenance. Its challenges include the need for accurate and up-to-date data as well as the complexity of integrating different systems and technologies. This paper explores the potential of combining digital twin and blockchain technologies to create next-generation transportation systems that are more efficient, secure, and sustainable. DTs can be used to simulate and optimize transportation operations and maintenance, while blockchain can enhance security and transparency in data exchange and transaction verification. By integrating these technologies, transportation systems can become more resilient, adaptable, and responsive to changing demands and challenges. This paper provides an overview of the key concepts and applications of DTs and blockchain in transportation, including use cases such as autonomous vehicles, smart logistics, and mobility as a service. It also discusses the technical and organizational challenges of implementing these technologies and suggests potential solutions and research directions. Specifically, this paper argues that DT and blockchain technologies have the potential to transform transportation systems into more efficient, sustainable, and equitable systems that can meet the needs of present and future generations.

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a network of interconnected medical devices, wearables, and sensors integrated into healthcare systems. It enables real-time data collection and transmission using smart medical devices with trackers and sensors. IoMT offers various benefits to healthcare, including remote patient monitoring, improved precision, and personalized medicine, enhanced healthcare efficiency, cost savings, and advancements in telemedicine. However, with the increasing adoption of IoMT, securing sensitive medical data becomes crucial due to potential risks such as data privacy breaches, compromised health information integrity, and cybersecurity threats to patient information. It is necessary to consider existing security mechanisms and protocols and identify vulnerabilities. The main objectives of this paper aim to identify specific threats, analyze the effectiveness of security measures, and provide a solution to protect sensitive medical data. In this paper, we propose an innovative approach to enhance security management for sensitive medical data using blockchain technology and smart contracts within the IoMT ecosystem. The proposed system aims to provide a decentralized and tamper-resistant platform that ensures data integrity, confidentiality, and controlled access. By integrating blockchain into the IoMT infrastructure, healthcare organizations can significantly enhance the security and privacy of sensitive medical data.

An estimated 1.3 million individuals every year pass away in crashes involving cars. A comprehensive vehicular communication system is necessary given the worrisome increase in daily accidents brought on by the spike in the number of vehicles using our roadways. The creation of a fresh communication paradigm with an accident prevention focus was motivated by this need. The research presented here offers an extensive system that uses cutting-edge technology to coordinate dynamic interactions between nearby vehicles. A sophisticated inter-vehicle communication network aided by radio frequency (RF) technology forms the basis of this breakthrough. By enabling vehicles to exchange vital warnings and data, this network fosters a cooperative environment for accident prevention. Each vehicle also has a Visible-Light Communications (VLC) module, which was carefully engineered to identify accidents and transmit realtime accident information to all connected vehicles.

Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize the way intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) operate in smart cities. By providing a secure and decentralized platform for data exchange and storage, blockchain can enhance the security, privacy, and interoperability of ITS systems. Blockchain technology can be used for various applications in ITS, including secure data exchange between vehicles, infrastructure, and service providers, smart contracts for autonomous vehicles, and decentralized marketplaces for transportation services. However, implementing blockchain in ITS comes with its own set of challenges, including scalability and high computational power requirements. Despite the challenges, blockchain technology offers significant opportunities for ITS in smart cities, enabling new business models and promoting innovation in transportation services. In this article, we study existing challenges, applications, and future requirements for ITS. We discuss the challenges of the ITS and their impact on smart cities. Blockchain-enabled applications are provided with performance analysis based on the critical parameters of ITS. We also derive the security requirements for future ITS. Finally, we provide some opportunities and possible research areas within the ITS to develop smart cities.

This article introduced a new deep learning framework for fault diagnosis in electrical power systems. The framework integrates the convolution neural network and different regression models to visually identify which faults have occurred in electric power systems. The approach includes three main steps: 1) data preparation; 2) object detection; and 3) hyperparameter optimization. Inspired by deep learning and evolutionary computation (EC) techniques, different strategies have been proposed in each step of the process. In addition, we propose a new hyperparameters optimization model based on EC that can be used to tune parameters of our deep learning framework. In the validation of the framework’s usefulness, experimental evaluation is executed using the well known and challenging VOC 2012, the COCO data sets, and the large NESTA 162-bus system. The results show that our proposed approach significantly outperforms most of the existing solutions in terms of runtime and accuracy.

Several emerging areas, such as sensor networks, the Internet of Things (IoT), and distributed networks are gaining traction where resource-constrained devices communicate by sharing privacy-preserving information. Due to heavy cryptographic components, standard cryptographic algorithms do not fit these IoT devices. In this article, we propose an efficient zero-knowledge blockchain-based privacy-preserving decentralized healthcare finance system that is suitable for lightweight computer devices. The proposed design mainly focuses on noninteractive zero-knowledge proof, which substantially reduces the cost of communication between two devices. We explain the system framework and its use case for a healthcare financial system at a micro-level. However, it can also be extended easily to more general financial systems. Our system framework is efficient and lightweight, using more efficient zero-knowledge-based proofs; validation of the transactions is done in milliseconds. As an advancement to our work, the proposed healthcare financial system for lightweight computer devices is also auditable without leaking any extra information than required.

In recent years, the corporate and industrial sectors have been experiencing significant transformations in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. It can improve vehicle safety by giving signals to other vehicles wirelessly. The latest software, hardware, and technologies are applied to develop trusted applications that make V2V communication more believable. Today, various technologies are incorporated into vehicles to remove the barrier to existing challenges. The connected vehicles in V2V communication use sensors, data storage, and communication devices. Vehicles can communicate using the latest secure and trusted Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) technology using direct and network communication modes. Even connected vehicles suffer from data security, user privacy, reliable environment, and vehicle security. Blockchain can help to eliminate those issues in V2V communication systems. Herein, a secure blockchain-enabled V2V communication system (BVCS) is proposed to enhance the security of vehicles and secure data sharing and communication among vehicles. The developed smart contracts in this paper can authenticate users and their vehicles automatically. In this paper, the proposed algorithms can authenticate users, detect unauthorized access, and establish secure communication between vehicles. The proposed system can enhance data security, user privacy, and vehicle security and provide a trusted environment in V2V communication systems.

With the exponential increase of interconnected communicating devices which make up the Internet of Things (IoT), securing the network transmission and the fifth generation (5G) systems which is the bedrock for IoT concept actualization is becoming more and more challenging. One of the major attacks which poses a great risk to data transmission is the eavesdropper (Eve) attack which occurs in both single input, single output (SISO), multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) systems. Thus, in this study, our focus is to establish a secured connection in a multiple-antenna transmission when the channel state information (CSI) of Eve is unknown to the network users. Our model comprises a secure wireless communication standard where Eve performs either optimal matched filtering (OMF) or a basic matched filtering (BMF) while the transmitting IoT node employs smart jamming strategy in order to compromise the activities of Eve. With respect to this and in attempt to realize maximum privacy, we examined the design of optimal jamming parameters. In the end, the numerical analysis of our investigation indicates that a substantial privacy advantage is achievable while utilizing only full-duplex jamming against using artificial noise from the transmitter only. However, a joint performance of both results shows a higher privacy improvement.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is making the world around us smarter and more convenient. However, its extensive application has rendered security problems, such as the privacy of sensitive data, increasingly serious. Encryption provides an effective and important means of protecting data privacy in the IoT. Because of resource limitations, to achieve high efficiency IoT devices require an encryption scheme that ensures that the encryption phase does not incur a heavy data transmission overhead. By virtue of its many advantages, the use of public-key encryption in current applications is widespread. Identity-based public-key encryption (IBE) removes the obstacle raised by the sophisticated certificate management required by other schemes, and its efficiency renders it more suitable for application in the IoT. However, a problem that needs to be solved in IBE is the revocation of a user whose private key may have been exposed. In this article, we present an efficient and practical IBE scheme having a revocation functionality to preserve data privacy in IoT applications. Elements in the system, such as sensors and actuators, can exchange encrypted data directly or via a cloud server. If a private key is compromised, the private key generator can revoke its user. The security of our proposed scheme can be proved based on SM9 encryption and the bilinear Diffie–Hellman problem.

The concept behind the Internet of Things (IoT) is taking everything and connecting to the internet so that all devices would be able to send and receive data online. Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is a key component of smart city which is an outcome of IoT. Nowadays the concept of IoT has plaid an important role in our daily life in different sectors like healthcare, agriculture, smart home, wearable, green computing, smart city applications, etc. The emerging IoV is facing a lack of rigor in data processing, limitation of anonymity, privacy, scalability, security challenges. Due to vulnerability IoV devices must face malicious hackers. Nowadays with the help of blockchain (BC) technology energy system become more intelligent, eco-friendly, transparent, energy efficient. This paper highlights two major challenges i.e. scalability and security issues. The flavor of edge computing (EC) considered here to deal with the scalability issue. A BC is a public, shared database that records transactions between two parties that confirms owners through cryptography. After a transaction is validated and cryptographically verified generates “block” on the BC and transactions are ordered chronologically and cannot be altered. Implementing BC and smart contracts technologies will bring security features for IoV. It plays a role to implement the rules and policies to govern the IoV information and transactions and keep them into the BC to secure the data and for future uses.

Cloud data centers are critical infrastructures to deliver cloud services. Although security and performance of cloud data centers have been well studied in the past, their networking aspects are overlooked. Current network infrastructures in cloud data centers limit the ability of cloud provider to offer guaranteed cloud network resources to users. In order to ensure security and performance requirements as defined in the service level agreement (SLA) between cloud user and provider, cloud providers need the ability to provision network resources dynamically and on the fly. The main challenge for cloud provider in utilizing network resource can be addressed by provisioning virtual networks that support information centric services by separating the control plane from the cloud infrastructure. In this paper, we propose an sdn based information centric cloud framework to provision network resources in order to support elastic demands of cloud applications depending on SLA requirements. The framework decouples the control plane and data plane wherein the conceptually centralized control plane controls and manages the fully distributed data plane. It computes the path to ensure security and performance of the network. We report initial experiment on average round-trip delay between consumers and producers.

In mobile ad hoc networks, the security enforcement and its implementation becoming increasingly difficult due to quasi-static nature of the mobile nodes (wireless communication devices), no fixed network topology and more importantly absence of centralized authority. In such networks, communication links between nodes may be bandwidth constrained, messages typically roamed in multi-hoped fashion, nodes may be powered by limited energy source and also have limited physical security. The major challenge in such networks is to give a robust security solution. The complexity of the problem is compounded by the fact that both active and passive attackers may present in the system, and nodes may not function properly in order to save its own energy by selective forwarding of the packets. This paper presents a distributed trust based security framework for ad hoc networks. We have proposed a clustering mechanism and security is enforced by local monitoring system by a new kind of nodes referred as guard nodes. This framework stems from cryptographic computation, which is not suitable in this scenario. The trust is computed depending upon some parameters which have a primary role in enforcing security and cooperation between the nodes. Also this solution conforms graceful leave and dynamic secure allocation of IP of the nodes.